Senate approves legislation to curb sex-trafficking, sending it to President Trump for signature

Democratic Senator from Missouri Claire McCaskill (C) speaks to members of the news media at the Senate subway before a Senate vote on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, USA, 17 October 2017.(Photo11: MICHAEL REYNOLDS, EPA-EFE)

WASHINGTON — The Senate gave final approval Wednesday to a bill aimed at cracking down on online sex trafficking, sending the measure to the White House where President Trump is expected to sign it into law.

Supporters said the bill would deliver justice to victims of sex trafficking and new enforcement tools to law enforcement officials tasked with prosecuting offenders. Sex trafficking — which some have called "modern-day slavery" — has grown rapidly in recent years as pimps and their customers have shifted from street corners to cyberspace to sell adults and children for sex.

“Today’s vote is a victory for trafficking survivors and a victory for our efforts to help stop the selling of women and children online,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a chief author of the measure.

The bill has already passed the House, and it cleared the Senate overwhelmingly, 97-to-2.

But the fight over the legislation could now move to the courts. Free-speech and open-Internet advocates argue the measure will stifle innovation and free speech online. And they said it could drive sex-trafficking even further underground.

"The legislation before the Senate will prove to be ineffective, it will have harmful unintended consequences, and it could be ruled unconstitutional," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Wyden argued that the bill could "send the bad guys beyond the grasp of law enforcement to the shadowy corners of the dark web, where everyday search engines don’t go, but where criminals find safe haven for their monstrous acts."

The Senate defeated an amendment that Wyden offered, which would have forced the bill to go back to the House for another vote. His provision would have appropriated $20 million a year over five years to investigate and prosecute sex trafficking crimes.

The Oregon Democrat said that increased funding was the only real way to crack down on sex traffickers. But Portman and others said it was designed to kill the bill.

FOSTA-SESTA is going to pass, and when it does, it should include REAL money to put sex traffickers in jail, not just make politicians feel good. I’m pushing for an amendment to guarantee $20 million a year to investigate and prosecute sex traffickers.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there’s been an 846% increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking from 2010 to 2015 – a spike the organization said was “directly correlated to the increased use of the internet to sell children for sex.”

The center responded to more than 10,000 reports regarding possible child sex trafficking in 2017, according to a spokeswoman. And from 2013 to 2017, 75% of its reports on child sex trafficking related to the trafficking of a child online.

Portman and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., led a multi-year investigation into Backpage.com, an advertising website that became a magnet for traffickers and their customers. Portman and McCaskill’s probe found the website used a filter that automatically stripped out words that would have revealed a child was being sold for sex — terms such as “Lolita,” “fresh,” and “school girl,” according to a report issued in January 2017 by the two senators. Employees would then post the edited ad in its adult section.

"They had been knowingly facilitating sex trafficking on their webpage and profiting to the tune of billions of dollars," McCaskill told reporters in a call before the Senate vote Wednesday. "The reason this had never come out and the reason they had never been held accountable was because of an outdated law that was providing them complete and totally immunity."

Parents and victims of sex trafficking have tried to sue Backpage.com, but courts have dismissed those suits, citing a provision in the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

Under that law, Internet companies and websites are not legally responsible for content posted by a third party. So, for example, Twitter and other social media sites cannot be sued if a user posts something offensive or illegal.

The Senate-passed bill would allow online platforms — everything from Facebook to Craigslist — to be held criminally and civilly liable if they knowingly facilitate sex trafficking. It would also allow state prosecutors to go after such websites.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said that could open the Internet to censorship and force small websites to police online speech. Supporters said the bill was narrowly tailored to avoid such an outcome.